


I keep my visions to myself

by hitandhope



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, Spoilers for S3 Ep5, Spoilers for S3Ep3, a couple of swears, fungi man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitandhope/pseuds/hitandhope
Summary: A missing scene from S3Ep5 which explores where Jenny went when she was unconscious...
Relationships: Nick Cutter/Jenny Lewis
Kudos: 2





	I keep my visions to myself

**Author's Note:**

> My brother and I have been re watching Primeval and I've not seen past series 2 since it aired cos y'know. Denial about a certain Scottish maverick. During S3e5 I was struck by the muse again and wrote this in about 30 mins. I haven't written Primeval fanfic for 11 years!! Fleetwood Mac own the title and the last couple of lines which is from their song 'Dreams.' I own nothing, only the typos, sorry for those. I just delve into the Primeval toy box, play a while with the characters, and then put them back...

She’s scrambling fighting desperately to grab the canister of gas. The iciness of the metal bites her already numb fingers which grapple without finding purchase. The creature has honed in on her again and she has no CO2 left to fight it off. She can feel her body already giving in to the calling of the cold. It’s an icy whisper of a caress across her skin, the air a heavy blanket welcoming her under.

‘Claudia Brown.’ 

Those words jolt her; shock her more effectively than any defibrillator. Then there are the arms round her waist, steady and sure: an anchor that she has so badly missed these past few weeks. She’s not sure how, but she’s up and running on shaky feet, him half supporting half carrying her. Her senses are awash with many conflicting stimuli, but she focuses on the scent of him: pine trees and scotch and male adrenaline. They run helter skelter away from the once human turned fungi infected killing machine that unfortunately is positioned right in front of the main exit. So instead they head deeper into the bowels of the ARC and seek solace in a small meeting room. They slam the door and Nick slides a table across it as reinforcement, should the creature follow in pursuit. She collapses down the wall her eyes falling shut as she catches her breath her chest heaving with the effort.

‘Well this is great’ she pants after a few moments, glaring at him. ‘We’re trapped now.’

‘You’re welcome’ he snipes back, doubled over hands on knees. ‘At least you won’t bloody freeze to death.’

Her head snaps up ‘but you’re...’

‘Dead, yeah’ he finishes drily as he joins her on the floor.

‘Even in my dreams you call me Claudia’ she complains not unkindly.

He smiles weakly at this and she studies him in this moment of stillness, unusual for them. Particularly him as he’s always at the forefront of the action, in the thick of it, knee deep in trouble. Although she noticed the spark had dulled slightly after Stephen’s death: he’d grown more tired. The weight of the responsibility dampening the spark of amusement and the thrill of danger during their adventures, as he no longer had his friend to share it with. But there he sits, legs long in front of him, eyes closed, the inertia entirely unsettling it’s creeping up her skin and...

‘Oh my god, I must have touched the... creature’ she panics and suddenly he’s on her knees before her.

‘Jenny, look at me’ she looks at his arm on hers and her stomach jolts but he just smiles ‘don’t worry about me. You just need to focus on your breathing, keep breathing.’  
She wants to do the opposite; she can feel it taking over her, clawing at her very being in duality with the panic. And yet she’s drawn to those icy blue pools and the comforting scent of his person which helps focus her, ground her, and draw her back to the present until...

‘There you are, see I told you,’ he remarks watching as the infection blackens and crumbles to ash.

‘What? Did you see it on ER once?’ she quips drily and his eyes glitter and the corners crinkle along with his mouth in the way they do when he’s amused. 

‘Something like that.’

She’s about to ask him something important when the room starts to shake, the light suddenly whiting out to almost blinding levels like looking into the sun. She tries to shield her face as some books thud to the floor. Nick glances at her in sheer terror.

‘No, no, those bloody idiots what are the playing around at?’ 

He grabs her arm and runs to the door, shoving the table away easily with one hand. They run back to the main operations halls but there’s no sign of the creature. The world shakes violently as if it is being torn apart by an earthquake and she almost stumbles. But Nick is there, both hands linking under her elbows. 

‘You should go Jenny, go far away there’s nothing left here’ he gestures round to the room falling away around them, crumbling, fading to white.

‘What about you?’

‘Oh er, I’ll take my chances. You know me.’

‘There’s so much I wanted to say but you died Nick, you bloody died’ she cries.

He just lets that wash over him and they regard each other silently for a few moments even while the world is collapsing and she knows she’s dying.

‘I would have, you know. I would have gone for that drink. I should have.’

‘There’s so much I wanted to tell you’ she laments and her forehead brushes his just like it did in another time, another dimension when she was someone else.

‘Don’t worry about that now, and I know Jenny. I know that you’re not...’ he shakes her arms and the world washes out to white until there’s nothing, absolutely nothing. 

She’s suspended, motionless, neither thinking nor feeling. She’s nothing, she doesn’t exist.

And then like breaking the surface of a pool the ARC is back in tatters around her, and he’s back too but he’s far away. It’s like she’s been in an explosion and all she has in her ears is tinnitus. His face is mouthing something she cannot before his lips meet hers and she can’t breathe again.

‘Nick’ she gasps as she surfaces back into the world, and she knows well before Abby gently tells her that he’s gone. It had just felt so incredibly real that she cannot help the lone tear that trails away like the last of her resolve.

He was right, and today has proven to her beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her time at the ARC is over. She’s not Nick or Stephen; she’s not prepared to die for this job. After all, that’s all it was: a job. Not a lifelong vocation or mission or quest to find a missing wife or lover. She took the job because it was highly recommended to her for the opportunities it would offer and she was ambitious. 

Not to mention the fact that it’s not just Nick’s ghost haunting her. Today she was shown undeniable proof of Cutter’s crazy claims that she was another woman. Claudia Brown. The spectre of a woman she cannot escape nor live up to. Even her dying brain could not give her closure that Nick truly knew she was her own person. That she is Jenny Lewis and not Claudia Brown. 

And now she’ll never know.

He’s dead and he’s not coming back.

And so neither is she.

She cannot be tormented like he was by Helen, she won’t allow it.

She is not Claudia Brown and Nick Cutter is dead. Even though he seems to want to wrap around her dreams, she hasn’t any dreams she’d like to sell. 

Not anymore.


End file.
